Review:
Movie Maestro 1.01
Reviewer: Mike Dixon
Edited by: Mike Dixon (7/28/03)
Publisher: SmartSound. ($49.95)

As more Mac users upgrade to computers that have Firewire and DVD burners, more will (at least) experiment with editing their home movies or developing video-based items for use in educational settings. Most video editers will admit, more often than not, music used in your video can make all the difference. The biggest problems are finding music you can legally use and also trying to fit it into your edited video. Smartsound had developed and released a $49 software program called Movie Maestro that takes the guess work out of everything. Sounds too good to be true? Read on to find out if this product is right for you.

I tested this program on a G4 iMac (flat-panel, 17-inch) running at 800 MHz. Movie Maestro performed well. Obviously, with this being a music product, speakers are necessary. A high-end Power Mac G3-based Mac would be fine as well. I preferred running this program in Mac OS X 10.2.6, although it does run in Mac OS 9 natively (as of the current version 1.01).

If you are a video professional and/or are planning to make money with the video products you create with help from Movie Maestro, beware! While Movie Maestro may be used to add music to a film or video that you plan to sell, be careful which Smartsound music tracks you use! If you use SmartSound Movie Maestro music CDs and the Movie Music series of CDs, they are licensed for non-commercial and educational use only. Smartsound does sell music for professional and commercial use (but those CDs cost significantly more, but sound a bit better).

Movie Maestro has a simple interface that allows you to create a music track that fits exactly where you need it in a video. Just import a edited QuickTime video clip into Movie Maestro, step through a few steps to find the right genre and track (preview each track as well prior to adding to a clip), and it gets inserted into your video. You can move and stretch it to fit and it automatically adjusts the tune so that it repeats certain sections and still ends on time. It does not speed up the track, change the pitch or loop segments. Rather, each track has been split into many different segments and the software moves them around to create a unique and low-repetitive sounding music track.

I had a 12-minute photo slideshow that needed background music for an educator at ECU. She liked one particular track that came with Movie Maestro, but it's original length was only 4 minutes. I stretched the track so that it fit the slideshow movie clip perfectly. The track did become somewhat repetitive after 12 minutes, but Movie Maestro did a good job keeping the song as fresh as possible.

If you don't have a video track ready to drag into Movie Maesto, don't fear. You can create a audio-only track to your exact time specifications. Best of all, you can have your newly created track exported directly into iMovie's extra audio track in the timeline. This was a great time saver. You can also export into iPhoto as well. The export features range from dirt-easy to surprisingly advanced, especially if you have QuickTime Pro. You can even save the audio clip as a 44k or 48k file (up-sampling) but don't expect the file to magically sound like a 44k or 48k file. It just makes it compatible with software that you're importing it into (Final Cut Pro, etc.).

Professionals should take note: the music quality of the music included with Movie Maestro (including the entire line of Movie Maestro CDs that you can get in addition to what comes with the program, $30/CD) are all sampled at 22k. These CDs are half of the quality you get on a commercial audio CD. I have to admit, while the extra CDs were pricey, these 22k tracks are very high quality and I've used them extensively in my work at the university without fear of quality issues. If you think they sound like a 128mb/s encoded MP3 file, guess again. Professionals will likely notice a difference, but for home use and educational projects, it's just fine (and I consider myself a semi-professional). You can import Smartsound's professional 44k music CDs ($99 each) into Movie Maestro, but you can't use regular audio CDs with it.

Movie Maestro did unexpectedly quit on me one time, but I can't fault the software for that necessarily. The problem has since not reappeared.

For home use and educational uses that don't result in a selling of a product (DVD, video, etc.), Movie Maestro and its collection of CDs will give you the "Hollywood" edge your videos need. If you plan to sell your videos, you can use Movie Maestro, but will need to make sure the music you're using is from Smartsound's professional/commercial CD collection which is licensed for such use. The extra CDs are expensive, but they do add more selection as you grow tired of the 26 tracks included with the program. Overall, Movie Maestro was fun to use, the music was fresh and useful, and I didn't have to read a manual to use the program. All combined, that gets an A in my book.